Chapter 5 Forced marriage is arranged

Sienna's POV

There are two kinds of danger in this world. The obvious kind guns, knives, poison and the slow kind the one that whispers your name and smiles while it ruins you.

Nico D'Amore was the second kind. I just hadn't realized how deep the damage went until he began playing his games. It started with the roses.

Every morning that week, I woke to find a single blood-red rose on my pillow. No note. No explanation. Just the same perfect bloom, de-thorned, placed with surgical care right beside my head. The first time, I threw it across the room. The second, I burned it in the fireplace. The third, I crushed it in my fist and flushed the petals down the sink. By the fourth, I left it there, staring at it for hours like it might explode or whisper something vile.

He was trying to get in my head.

And it was working because now, I didn't just hate Nico. I thought about him constantly. His voice. His hands. The way his presence shifted a room. The way my skin reacted when he stood too close, the heat, the danger. I hated how my body responded to him-how my mind started playing tricks on me at night.

The dreams didn't help.

Dark hands. Velvet ropes. A mouth that promised destruction. A voice murmuring, Say my name.

When I woke up from one of them, gasping and drenched in sweat, there was a fifth rose on the pillow. This time, the petals were bruised. And there was a single black feather beside it.

On the sixth morning, I broke my silence. I stormed into his study without knocking. The guards outside barely moved. One of them smirked. The doors were open-of course they were. He'd been waiting for me.

Nico sat behind a desk carved from black oak, cigarette smoke curling in the air, a half-empty glass of whiskey in his hand. He wore a white button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled, showing the ink that laced his arms. His tie was undone. His hair perfectly disheveled.

He didn't look surprised to see me. If anything, he looked amused. "Rosetti," he drawled. "Miss me?" I marched to his desk and slammed the sixth rose down in front of him. "Stop this." He glanced at it. "That one's a little wilted."

"I'm not playing your game."

"You already are."

"I'm not some little bird for you to break."

"No," he said, voice soft now. "You're a wolf pretending to be a lamb. But your teeth are starting to show." I leaned over the desk. "You think you're clever? That this is seductive?" His gaze dropped to my mouth. "You tell me." My breath hitched, he stood, slowly, deliberately.

The man was taller than I remembered. Larger in presence than even his reputation suggested. He came around the desk like he had all the time in the world and stopped just inches from me.

His voice dipped low. "You wake up thinking about me."

"No," I lied. "You dream about me."

"I dream about slitting your throat."

He smiled like I'd told him something flattering. "Good. Passion makes things interesting." I shoved him. Hard. "I'm not your toy." He didn't stumble. Didn't react. Just stared at me with that maddening calm. "You're not my toy, Sienna," he said. "You're my obsession." I blinked. "You don't even know me."

"I know the way your eyes go cold when you're about to lie. I know the way your pulse flutters when I stand too close. I know you pace six times around your room before you sleep. I know you leave your window open-because you like the air, not because you want to escape again." He stepped closer, now toe to toe.

"I know you, Rosetti. I'm learning you."

My mouth was dry.

"You're insane."

"No," he said. "I'm patient."

Then he brushed past me and left the study. I stood there for five full minutes, staring at the spot where he'd stood. Trying to steady my breathing trying not to admit the truth he was getting under my skin and I hated it.

That night, I tried to distract myself. I found the library-a massive room with high shelves, a fireplace, and a spiral staircase that climbed to an upper balcony. It smelled like old books and secrets. I pulled a volume at random and curled up on one of the leather chairs, trying to lose myself in something-anything-that wasn't Nico D'Amore.

I didn't hear him come in but I felt him,

like gravity shifting. He didn't speak. Just walked to the far shelves and began scanning the spines of books as if I weren't there. I ignored him.

Five minutes passed.Then he spoke.

"Do you know why I said yes to the marriage?" I looked up slowly. "Because your father told you to?" He shook his head. "He warned me against it." That surprised me.

"I wanted you," he said. I scoffed. "You didn't even know me."

"I'd seen your file. Your photo. I'd heard the stories-the convent girl, the ghost daughter of Riccardo Rosetti."

"And that was enough?"

"It was more than enough."

"Why?"

He met my eyes. "Because I collect rare things. And no one has ever touched you not just your body, but your mind. You're untouched. Untamed. You're not carved by this world yet." I stared at him.

"And you want to be the one who carves me?" He smiled, slow and dangerous. "I want to ruin you in all the ways that count." I stood and shoved the book back into the shelf. "I'm not some art piece you can hang on your wall and claim as yours."

"No," he said. "You're a fire. And I want to burn with you." That shut me up. He walked to me slowly, his hand grazing a shelf, eyes locked on mine. When he reached me, he reached up-not to touch me, but to pull a book from the shelf above my head but his body was flush against mine and his voice brushed my ear. "I won't touch you until you beg me to."Then he left.

Back in my room, I slammed the door and let out a scream into a pillow. The man was poison. Addictive, lethal, slow-burning poison but something inside me had begun to change. It was the worst thing imaginable. I wasn't just surviving this. I was starting to feel it.

The rage. The pull. The obsession. He wanted to ruin me but what scared me more-was that part of me wanted to let him.